Things Unseen
by LadySkywalkerKirkland
Summary: Young Obi-Wan survives yet another kidnapping and Qui-Gon sees a fine opportunity for a teachable moment. Little does he know he's not the only stubborn Jedi looking out for his Padawan - though none of the living remember it. (canon-compliant)


**Disclaimer:** I don't own these characters. *and there was very cry*

 **A/N:** I know, I know! I'm supposed to be working on "Silent Angel." I will start on my next chapter tomorrow, as it's getting pretty late tonight. But this here is a belated birthday present for my good friend dyingsighs on tumblr, who recently turned 24! :D In honor of your birthday, young Obi-Wan got captured! (oops) But it's not a sad story, so don't be scared and please enjoy! (Also my first time really writing Obi-Wan - hope I got him right!)

* * *

"It's called the Window."

The human woman who had brought a contingent of guards to fetch him from his cell, and who had, on the first day of his captivity here, introduced herself as the high priestess and leader of this Dark cult, beckoned the group through a low entryway into a large natural cavern. At the other end of the underground chamber was a vast stone vault which looked as though it had been carved directly into the face of the rock. The massive door stood yawning open, dwarfing the vault's contents in the harsh light of the mounted, wrought-metal lamps which had been lit on either side. For its own part, the object of interest looked innocuous enough: a simple, glittering dark stone about the size his Master's favorite tea kettle.

Obi-Wan Kenobi knew better. Whether at one time it had simply been an ordinary stone, he couldn't say. It was enough to know that, at present, the Dark Side rolled off the thing in waves.

Obi-Wan made a conscious effort to slow his breathing and fight down the waves of dizziness that had accompanied the sudden surge of fear he had felt with her pronouncement. He dared a sidelong glance up at the tall, imposing, dark-robed males who walked to either side of him. Well, at least he assumed they were males. He couldn't see their faces beneath the cowls of their impressively large hoods, but in the few days he had been imprisoned here he had learned that, though the group was composed of a multitude of races, the females seemed to unilaterally hold the positions of authority, with males filling the roles of warriors and guards. Not that anyone looked to have a problem with this arrangement; everyone Obi-Wan had encountered here gave new meaning to the word "fanaticism."

As they continued to near the vault, Obi-Wan realized that what had appeared to be chips of crystal within the stone which caught the light was in fact a gold inlay over intricate carvings of unfamiliar symbolism which spiderwebbed over the stone's surface. The shining metalwork contrasted with the blue-black depths of the stone itself with a beauty that beckoned him to come and take a closer look, even as every instinct he possessed screamed at him to run as fast and as far as he could.

Obi-Wan shuddered and tentatively tested the strength of the binders around his wrist once again.

No good. The metal of the primitive restraint was solid, and the link which held the tight cuffs close together in front of him was formed of a single piece, with no hinge or pin or chain to give leverage to a sudden surge of Force-enhanced strength.

At least they weren't shock binders. Though, in a way, that was not at all reassuring.

Since the beginning of his apprenticeship, Obi-Wan had discovered to his dismay that he had an unfortunate tendency to be captured, kidnapped, and otherwise held hostage by all manner of unpleasant people, his current predicament being but the most recent example. Perhaps it was because Qui-Gon Jinn was such a formidable Jedi Master that many of his enemies saw no other way to gain the upper hand than to threaten his Padawan. Perhaps the Force was testing him, or perhaps he was just unlucky.

Obi-Wan had a sneaking suspicion that the truth was some Force-forsaken combination of all three.

Though barely past his sixteenth birthday, he had experienced beatings, deprivations, and even a brief period or two of enslavement from past captors. He had come close to death on more than one occasion. But this was something new, and frankly, Obi-Wan found it terrifying.

The binders, though near-impossible to escape from, weren't electrified and honestly didn't even really hurt. Ever since he had been seemingly-randomly snatched from the streets of Coruscant while on an errand for his Master, he had been provided with sufficient food and water, and, though the unending darkness of the catacombs had been disheartening, he had even been given a blanket in the small, damp cell in which he had spent the past few days. He was beginning to realize that all these facts added up to one increasingly likely conclusion.

They wanted him, not to get at Qui-Gon or some other impersonal goal. Him, specifically. Obi-Wan Kenobi. Now, as the priestess led him under guard to the vault where several more similarly-dressed females waited, he began to suspect why.

He had to consciously slow his breathing again. It wouldn't do him any good to panic now. He would need his complete mind focused and alert if he was to survive battle with such a Dark thing – perhaps even a Sith thing which had outlived the Order that created it.

The priestess who had led him here stopped and turned to him. "Do you know why you are here, young Jedi?" she asked.

Obi-Wan shook his head mutely even as he raised his shields against the creeping Darkness. He had a fleeting moment of anxiety about cutting himself off from the training bond with his Master, but he brushed it aside. He had spent countless hours trying to reach Qui-Gon in the days he had spent lying in a cell, but had received no definite reply. He trusted that his Master was doing everything he could to reach him. But for now, Obi-Wan had to look to his own safety.

The woman smiled hungrily. "You are here because you can do what we cannot. You can look into the Window and tell us the future."

Obi-Wan couldn't help himself. "Did you mean for me to take that literally or poetically?"

In the next moment she had both raised her hand as though to backhand him across the face, and stopped it cold, raised threateningly in place of the vanished smile as she visibly struggled to control herself. Obi-Wan mentally berated himself at what Qui-Gon had dubbed his "disturbing, ever-increasing tendency to reject the amount of danger the Force had deigned to give him by provoking his enemies with unnecessary caustic remarks."

" _You_ will use _that_ ," she hissed, pointing to the stone.

Obi-Wan had guessed that there were no Force-sensitives among the cultists, but this confirmed it.

"I'm sorry to have to tell you, but that isn't how the future works – or how the Force works. For one thing, we understand that there isn't one set future. Any small action today can change major historical events tomorrow. There _are_ some Jedi, it's true, who are able to seek out visions of potential futures at will, but only among the oldest of our Order, those who have devoted their whole lives to the art of seeing. I'm only an apprentice, and I don't think I have any particular gift for sensing the future." He shook his head, trying to stay calm. "Whatever you wanted, you can't get with me."

Obi-Wan's jailor wasn't fazed by his speech. In fact, her smile only grew wider.

"You see, that's where you're wrong." She moved closer to the vault and trailed one hand along its edge, almost but not quite brushing her fingers against the stone itself. "What we want, we can only get with you. This," she said, tapping a finger on the vault's edge, "is the Window of Darth Narxis."

A thrill a fear ran the length of Obi-Wan's body. So they _were_ associated with the Sith.

"Our ancient texts tell us that at first this was nothing more than a tool used by the Dark Lord in his meditations. You might not be a seer, but Lord Narxis certainly was. And you are right – or, that is, the Jedi are right: there is no one fixed future. But what there also is, is potential. Threads."

She stopped in front of Obi-Wan and reached a hand toward her neck, pulling a pendant on a thin silvery chain from beneath her pale gray robes. She knelt in front of him and held the pendant closer. Obi-Wan saw that it was a piece of dark chipped stone that greatly resembled the stone in the vault, and the same Dark energy emanated from it.

Then, to his surprised distress, as she held it closer and closer to him, it began to _glow_ with an eerie green light.

"This," she purred, "is how we found you. How we _chose_ you. This is a piece of the larger stone, there, which was broken off for this very purpose. Darth Narxis used the stone so deeply and so long that it began to respond to his power, until it, like him, could sense the threads. The connections, if you will, the ties that bind things and people and places their most probable destiny." She swung the charm back and forth like a pendulum, and the light within it flickered ominously as it repeatedly came close to Obi-Wan. "The greater the destiny, the brighter the threads, and, most importantly, the more inexorable the events surrounding you." She snatched the pendant back out of the air and grinned at Obi-Wan with wicked pleasure. "Your thread is _very_ bright. Now, come up to the stone."

Obi-Wan didn't move. If he had been afraid before, he was even more so now.

Her smile disappeared and she jerked her head in command at the nearest guard.

Obi-Wan bit back a cry of pain and stumbled forward as he was jabbed between the shoulder blades by end of a guard's staff roughly enough to unbalance him. Righting himself with effort with his bound hands, he warily approached the vault, straining against his natural revulsion to the Darkness that permeated the stone.

"Now then," the priestess said, placing her hands on Obi-Wan's shoulders and looking him in the eyes (and how he wished she would get her hands _off_ him), "you will meditate with the stone, and you will sense into the future. Your own future, that's all. You'll report to us anything and everything you see that isn't simply a personal moment – all galactic events, however large or small they may seem."

Obi-Wan glanced over at the stone nervously, and then looked back at her. "Why…why do you want to know?"

She was smiling again. He hated it.

"Never mind that, now. All you have to do is look into your own future. Aren't you curious? After all…" she trailed off and looked knowingly at the Window. Obi-Wan's eyes followed hers against their will and he felt suddenly faint when he saw that the large stone was now glowing with that same sickly green light. "…what young man doesn't want to know all about the great destiny that awaits him? Don't you want to take just one quick look? What harm would it be? It's not as though sensing the future is forbidden among the Jedi. You wouldn't be doing anything wrong," she purred soothingly.

Now that Obi-Wan thought about it, looking at it differently, the light was beautiful in its own way. Against the blue-black of the stone, he could almost imagine it to be the shimmer of treasure glimpsed in the ocean's depths or the sheen of an aurora against a sky dark with stars. He had always wanted to be a Jedi Knight, but he had never really pictured anything like having a great destiny. Especially in the last few years. After all, he had become a Padawan by a hair's breadth – not necessarily the makings of the stuff of legends. And he wasn't sure that he wanted to be famous, but…but he did want to make a difference. He wanted to matter. He wanted somebody somewhere, someday in the future, to look back at something _very good_ that had happened, and say, "This wouldn't have been possible without Obi-Wan Kenobi." Even if it was only a family that was able to embrace each other at the end of the day, reunited in love because of something he'd done.

Even something so small as that.

He knew it wasn't right of him to secretly wish these things, not as a Jedi. The self was not important. It equally served the will of the Force for Obi-Wan Kenobi to make his mark on the world or to simply and quietly serve his brothers and sisters before just as quietly slipping from this mortal life, unheralded.

But he was young, and plagued by self-doubt, and like many such young people before him, he wanted a weighty validation from the universe that his birth had been worthwhile.

 _I convinced the stubbornest Jedi Master in the entire Order to take on another Padawan. Qui-Gon sees something worthwhile in me, I_ know _he does, even when I can't. What other proof do I need?_ Obi-Wan snapped back out of the daydream and his hand froze where it had been drifting closer to the stone, unawares. He shook his head to clear the last traces of confusion and stepped back a pace from the vault.

"No," he told the priestess, and shook his head firmly.

She smiled thinly. "You seem to be under the impression that I'm giving you a choice."

But Obi-Wan had made up his mind. "No," he repeated. "You'll have to find some other Force-sensitive to sense the future for you, because I will not."

One of the other females, a rose-skinned humanoid of a race Obi-Wan didn't recognized, _tsked_ in obvious irritation at the high priestess. "I knew we shouldn't have gone with a Jedi. Even the young ones have too much backbone. He has to let it in himself; and what are you going to do now?"

"We could do this the hard way," the high priestess answered smoothly. Before Obi-Wan had time to react, she snapped her fingers at a guard Obi-Wan hadn't noticed before, who had been standing slightly off to one side. "Drug him."

He tried to bolt, but he didn't even make it two meters before multiple sets of strong arms wrapped around him and dragged him, struggling, back to the vault. The priestess removed the stone from its place even as a guard forced him roughly to his knees. There was a sharp, cold stinging sensation on his upper right arm, and the world began to go hazy as he felt the _thing_ being shoved into his unwilling hands.

Then he was dragged _in_ , into a maze of thought and light and sound, and he forgot which way was up.

* * *

Later, all he could remember was the continuing sensation of being dragged further _in_ , even as he was being tugged in a multitude of different directions at once. Certainly, he didn't remember seeing anything that looked like a major galactic event or a great destiny – in fact, he didn't see anything at all. He just felt.

He felt far too much more than he could handle.

Emotions and sensations passed by too quickly to process, overwhelming in their sheer numbers, enough to fill a lifetime.

He could feel Force-signatures, too. Some were familiar, and some weren't. Occasionally he had been able to identify them. Friends and agemates, and recognizable great Masters such as Yoda. At first, he had even been able to feel Qui-Gon, though his sense of his Master's presence had been mercilessly torn away from him early on. Curiously, after he had recovered a bit from the pain of _that_ , he now felt Qui-Gon being dragged behind _him_ , almost as though he were following behind, faint but there, as discernible as the echo of an echo.

Obi-Wan didn't have time to think much on it, because everything…well, he didn't have a much better way to explain it than to say that everything was getting _worse_. And even as the cacophony of sensations that resounded through the Force passed the point of unbearable, even then it was all but drowned out by a new and unfamiliar Light beyond blinding, blinding though all was tinged with Darkness.

Obi-Wan knew in the back of his mind that whatever drugs they had given him had weakened his will long enough for his shields to drop and him to half-consciously enter something that resembled meditation enough for the artifact to work. But whatever Dark power had taken hold of him and dragged him in here (the stone itself? the spirit of a long-dead Sith Lord?) wasn't slowing, even as Obi-Wan hurdled nearer and nearer to what he could only describe as an abyss – a never-ending season of despair.

He didn't know what it was. He just knew, somehow, that he might not survive intact and sane to see what lay at the other end.

In his desperation, he flailed mentally, reaching out to the threads of the lives around him, not knowing whether they were connected to real beings that could help him or whether they were just projections in the Force. When his panicked attempts inevitably brushed against the Light that buzzed incessantly around him, though, something happened.

The onrush began to slow.

There was a distant boom, like an avalanche, and a pulse of pure white, unfettered by any mists of grey, hurtled along the Light-thread from _beyond_ the abyss.

At least, that's what Obi-Wan thought happened. He couldn't be sure, because in the next instant everything shattered, and he was finally allowed a moment's rest as his mind faded into nothingness.

* * *

The first time Obi-Wan awoke, he was lying on soft grass near the sound of rushing water. The air was cool but not too cold, and there was a gentle breeze that carrying birdsong.

He shifted and opened his eyes to see a lush and beautiful forest full of trees and flowers, which thinned out near the slope on which he now lay, a grassy plain leading to a shining lake. He blinked a little in the twilight and sat up slowly, surprised to find that nothing hurt. He gazed at the lake for a few solid minutes out of the pure shock of seeing something so improbable, then glanced curiously to his right, and then to his left.

And promptly proceeded to nearly jump out of his skin and roll down the hill when he met a pair of bright blue eyes looking back.

"So you're awake, then," the other boy said without preamble, for another boy his companion in this strange place was, and one who looked to be about Obi-Wan's age, or perhaps a year or two younger. "Good. I was beginning to worry." He sat up. "You slept for a _long_ time."

Obi-Wan looked him over curiously, intrigued by the air of Jedi-but-not-Jedi he carried with him. His clothes were vaguely Jedi-like, it was true, though a dark brown jerkin over a hooded white tunic was an uncommon combination to say the least. And though he was of an age to be an apprentice, overlong curls of dark gold brushed over his ears without a sign of a braid. Last but not least, Obi-Wan felt his eyebrows shoot up when he saw that the other boy was barefoot.

He laughed when he saw Obi-Wan's expression, and it was a sound filled with the kind of pure joy that Obi-Wan had never heard before. "It's a little weird I guess, but I thought that, even though it's an illusion, if I can feel things, I might as well. After all," he said, stretching his arms and legs out on the green ground beneath him, "I never did get over the feel of grass, though I haven't…well." He seemed to brush off a look of fleeting…regret or longing, or a mix of both – Obi-Wan couldn't tell. The boy turned to regard him again. "How old are you, now?"

Obi-Wan automatically answered, "Sixteen, but only barely," before he realized that he had let his guard down with a complete stranger when it could all be a trick. "And who are you?"

The boy thought for a moment, then shook his head. "I'd better not tell. Going through that hurt you pretty bad," here his eyes flashed for a brief instant in a terrifying and ageless anger, "so you probably won't remember much when you wake up, but that's a risk I'm not willing to take. If you do remember, it might make things worse, and Force knows the last thing any of us needs is for it to get worse."

Obi-Wan just sat for a moment, trying to work his brain around everything he was being told. "Alright, so then, _what_ are you? Where are we? You mentioned earlier that this is an illusion…and even though I don't know where I am, I trust you, though I don't know you and I don't know why."

"We're in your head," he answered, "though all _this_ is of my making, from my memories. You'll have to forgive me for indulging myself a little." He wiggled his toes luxuriously in the grass again and shrugged. "I just thought that it might be a nice place for you to rest awhile before I tried to wake you, if you didn't wake up on your own. It was always a place of refuge for me. Well," he amended, "not _always_ , but like I said, I'm not going into that. As to how I got you here, _you_ called _me_ , if you don't remember. I'm not quite sure where that was, but I was able to make it release its hold on you, and with a little effort I was able to split it atom from atom so that it could never try it again." His tone lightened a bit from the dark edge it had taken on as he continued. "Whatever it was, it must have had some serious ability to amplify connections, because if you're only sixt – wait, did you say you were _sixteen_?"

"Yes?" Obi-Wan said from where he had been sitting quietly and trying to decipher the other boy's ramblings.

"But…but I chose to appear as fourteen because, because I thought that if I looked your age then you wouldn't be scared when you woke up but I guessed by height so it turns out that I'm _still_ younger because you're _still_ unnaturally short."

While he was taking a breath, Obi-Wan thought this was a good time to reiterate his "What are you?" question, followed by, "Are you human? Because you look human, but…"

"Huh? Oh. No, I'm perfectly human – well, mostly human. But mostly, I'm just dead, is all." He grinned as though that answered everything.

Obi-Wan threw his hands in the air. "I don't suppose you'd care to explain any of this in a way that makes any sort of logical sense, would you?"

"I mean, I wouldn't mind, but, like I said, that would require explanations that might be risky to give." He smiled sadly. "So. Are you ready to go back? I don't know what sort of situation you'll find yourself in, but it won't do your body any good for you to stay here too long, and I can't keep you here forever, either – _I'll_ have to go back eventually, too."

"I suppose, although," here Obi-Wan paused long enough for the other boy to give him an encouraging nod to continue, "although I am a bit worried – it probably seems silly, after everything – a bit worried about how I am to explain all this. Jedi Masters don't take kindly to Padawans who meddle with Sith artifacts, even if it was under coercion."

He smiled. "Why don't you try telling me your story first? Since you were forced to do it, maybe just getting a clear picture of what happened in your head will help you defend your case later, whether to your own Master or whoever. I can stay a little longer, and I promise that I'm much less hard on troublemakers, coerced or deliberate, than anyone with a Council seat; it's a point of personal pride."

So Obi-Wan did, and the other boy was right – he did feel better. As the other boy prepared to send him "back to the world of the living," he stopped and looked Obi-Wan straight in the eyes, his own blues more deadly serious than Obi-Wan had seen them this whole time.

"Did you mean it?"

Obi-Wan didn't understand. "Mean what?"

"When you were talking about your destiny, and what you wanted from it. About the impact you wished you could make on the world, the least thing that you thought would make your life worthwhile? That you wanted to let go because you felt it wasn't Jedi-like?"

Obi-Wan remembered.

 _Even if it was only a family that was able to embrace each other at the end of the day, reunited in love because of something he'd done._

 _Even something so small as that._

"Yes, I suppose – even if it _is_ somewhat un-Jedi-like, I suppose I did. Do."

"Good. _Don't_ let that go. Hold on to it, and I promise you, you will see it fulfilled." His face softened from gravity to supplication. "Please?"

"Okay," said Obi-Wan, not really understanding but feeling that it was very important.

"Okay."

* * *

The second time he woke up, _everything_ hurt, but he couldn't quite remember why that should surprise him. In any case, the entire situation wasn't as bad as it could've been. The Window had been destroyed (and, curiously, that _didn't_ surprise him), and the cultists had been defeated, and Obi-Wan had nearly driven his Master into his grave with worry by refusing to awaken from a semi-comatose state.

But awaken he did, though this misadventure had ended as nearly half of his seemed to, with an unfortunate amount of bedrest prescribed by Jedi Healers who were all too well-versed in all things Kenobi for him to escape them easily (especially when all his limbs still felt made of lead and he had had a single headache for nearly two weeks).

It was during the third week that Obi-Wan told the story to his master – told the story for the second time, though he couldn't imagine where that idea had come from. When he came to describing what it had felt like to feel the future as the Window showed it, and how he had been rescued, he faltered.

"It wasn't…it wasn't as though I were seeing my future in a holovid, it was more like I was feeling my future. And there were impressions through the Force, certainly, but…even more strongly than that, I could feel connections – _strong_ connections – to other people. Other Jedi. Some I didn't know. Maybe one of them saved me? I don't know, but it's the best theory I've come up with."

Qui-Gon sipped his tea pensively from where he sat in a chair pulled up near Obi-Wan's bed. "Curious. It's as though the technique was developed through a melding of Unifying and Living Force practices."

"Master…" Obi-Wan groaned.

"Well, I think your theory is as good as any, Padawan. Though we don't understand how it worked, the stone is now destroyed, so our lack of understanding offers little danger."

"Yes, Master. But why? I mean, when we read about Seers having visions, they have – well, visions! They _see_ things."

Qui-Gon sipped at his tea again. "Would it have made more sense to you, Obi-Wan, to have seen battles and treaties and the like?"

Obi-Wan shrugged. "Yes. I think so."

"However much evil might have been contained in that artifact – and it _was_ a Dark thing, Obi-Wan, make no doubt of that – leave it to a Sith object to prove a point that I could not make with the Council should I try for a century. Padawan, battles and treaties and 'major galactic events' are composed of people. They are remembered because they are the small actions of often thousands of people combined and piled on top of one another to produce larger ripples that can turn the tide of whole societies. And those small actions, in turn, are shaped and molded by the fluidity of connections. Not that we Jedi may claim to indulge in such things as much as other, common folk, but then again, the common folk have as much a hand in driving the ripples as the Jedi."

Obi-Wan pondered this for a moment and Qui-Gon silently let him.

"Are you saying," he asked at last, "that the future I felt – if it wasn't a lie – was a clearer picture than if I'd been given…a picture?"

Qui-Gon beamed. "Exactly, Padawan! Well done! You – and the cultists – expected to see things, but what you got were the things _unseen_ , and they turned out to be more important in the end, I think. In any case, they may have saved you."

It would become one of Obi-Wan's favorite lessons to remember of his Master.

And though he had forgotten the promise and the plea, he never – not when it really mattered at least – ever, let go of his one little dream.

* * *

"For this light momentary affliction is preparing us for a weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal."

\- 2 Corinthians 4:17-18


End file.
